Alisa

“When you've known somebody too long, it's like they're talking to a version of you from years ago, even though you've updated all your software. You're the same program, except also you're not. It's a little easier around somebody who doesn't know you as well, who doesn't remember that one bad haircut from fourth grade, or the first kid you had a crush on. Somebody who doesn't feel comfortable calling your parents by their first names. Somebody who doesn't know your parents' names at all.”
― Christina Hammonds Reed, The Black Kids

“Sometimes it's hard being a girl, and it's hard being black. Being both is like carrying a double load, but you're not supposed to complain about it. There are so many things you have to remember about how to be.”
― Christina Hammonds Reed, The Black Kids

“Because a bunch of dudes beating on one dude who was already on the ground until he's brain damaged and broken is wrong. Because prosecuting people differently for the same exact crimes because of skin color is wrong. Because some people being able to buy private islands while other people sleep outside on the ground is wrong. Because knowingly destroying poor communities with drugs let in to fund wars against foreign regimes is fundamentally wrong. Because even though you finally enact a Civil Rights Act not even thirty years ago, it doesn't erase centuries of unequal wealth, unequal access, unequal schooling, unequal living conditions, unequal policing. You can't tell people to pull up on bootstraps when half of them never had any boots to begin with, never even had the chance to get them. Or when you let people burn whole, thriving black communities to the ground and conveniently forget about it. Because maybe the problem isn't only with "bad" people, maybe the problem is with the whole system.”
― Christina Hammonds Reed, The Black Kids

“It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us